1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an estimation and designing supporting apparatus which estimates and designs an installation(system), such as an industrial machine for manufacturing metal parts a plant, and so on which is to be designed and manufactured individually in accordance with a required specification.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since an industrial machine for manufacturing metal parts, a plant and so on are designed and manufactured individually in accordance with its specification, design needs to be conducted to a certain extent based on a required specification in order to determine its price. For this reason, when receiving an inquiry from a customer, a manufacturer of the industrial machine or the like must take such steps as confirming a specification at the customer""s site, then taking back the confirmed specification to its own office to design it to a certain extent for the estimation.
A customer in some cases designates a specification with allowances concerning the industrial machine and so on. In such cases, a price of a product may be extremely lowered just by changing the designated specification slightly. In such cases, reversely, the performance of a product may be far increased, although a price may be increased too, by a slight change of the specification. For these reasons, it is preferable to provide not only an estimation for an installation with a specification required by a customer but also estimations for an installation with specifications close to the customer""s requirement. However, it do no more impose burden on the customer if estimations would be submitted for various specifications close to the specification required by the customer after confirming the specification, with the conventionally steps followed.
An object of the present invention is to provide an estimation and designing supporting apparatus with which an estimation for an installation to be designed and manufactured individually in accordance with a specification can be promptly submitted at the place where the specification is given.
In order to solve the object, the present invention provides an estimation and designing supporting apparatus for estimating an installation which is to be manufactured by combining various types of components which is required to be designed in accordance with a specification. The estimation and designing supporting apparatus is provided with specification acquiring means for acquiring a specification of the installation to be manufactured, designing means for determining the types and sizes of components required for manufacturing the installation which meets the specification acquired by the specification acquiring means, estimating means for, calculating the costs required for manufacturing the installation based on the types and sizes of components determined by the designing means, and cost outputting means for outputting the costs calculated by the estimating means. As explained above, the estimation and designing according to supporting apparatus the present invention has the function of calculating and outputting costs in accordance with a specification. For this reason, if the estimation and designing supporting apparatus an estimation and designing of the invention is used, an estimation of an installation according to the specification can be obtained without delay at the place where the specification is determined. Therefore, requirements of a customer can be satisfied precisely and quickly.
For realizing the estimation and designing supporting apparatus according to the present invention, it is desirable that standard cost data storing means for storing standard cost data used by the estimating means for calculating each cost of a plurality of components based on the sizes of the components is added and that the estimating means calculates the costs required for manufacturing the installation based on the types and sizes of the components determined by the designing means as well as the standard cost data stored in the standard cost data storing means. If such a structure is adopted, the estimation and designing supporting apparatus (especially the estimating means) can be realized relatively easily.
The estimation and designing supporting apparatus according to the present invention is preferable to have default data information storing means for storing default data information used for specifying a default data of specification item based on data of at least one specification item among a plurality of specification items consisting the specification. In this case, it is desirable that the specification acquiring means acquires the data of at least one specification item, while displaying a of screen for acquiring the data and has a determining means for determining default data of the specification item based on the data of already acquired and of at least one specification item and the default data information stored in the default data information storing means, and displaying means for displaying a screen for acquiring data by which the determination default data is updated. When such a structure is adopted, data volume that a user must input can be reduced. As a result, the estimation and designing supporting apparatus that can be easily operated is obtained.
Moreover, a converting means for converting specification item data that can be directly used by the designing means each time the data of the specification item is acquired by the specification acquiring means may be added. In this case, the designing means may determine the types and sizes of components required for manufacturing the installation meeting the specification acquired by the specification acquiring means based on the data converted by the converting means. If such a structure is adopted, since the volume that the designing means must process is reduced, an estimation and designing supporting apparatus which can operate in high speed can be obtained. Further, since the converting means functions burning a user confirms the contents of a screen for data acquisition, the operating speed of an estimation and designing supporting apparatus is never affected by the addition of the converting means.
The estimation and designing supporting apparatus according to the present invention may be, a shape data storing means for storing shape data representing a three-dimensional shape of each of a plurality of components, drawing means for drawing a three-dimensional external appearance of the installation of the estimation based on the types and sizes of components determined by the designing means and the shape data stored in the storing means, and external appearance outputting means for outputting the external appearance drawn by the drawing means.
In addition, the estimation and designing supporting apparatus according to the present invention may be realized as a stand alone apparatus or may be structured as to be able to conduct data transmission via communication lines. To describe it concretely, in order to conduct the data transmission via communication lines, the specification acquiring means may acquires a specification from a terminal connected thereto via a communication line and the cost outputting means may output the cost calculated by the estimating means. Further, the estimation and designing supporting apparatus with the drawing means maybe structured so that the above-mentioned specification acquiring means and the cost outputting means are adopted, and that the external appearance outputting means outputs the external appearance drawn by the drawing means to the terminal.